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Post by danielle on Sept 6, 2006 3:53:09 GMT -5
Putting the pen down, Dani looked down at the stack of application forms with a pleased expression. She'd grabbed one for pretty much every store in the town, so now all she had to do was make sure that she was dressed nicely and go drop them off. She was hoping that she'd get a job behind the scenes rather than behind the counter dealing with customers, but she'd just have to wait and see what came out of it.
She was a bit paranoid, actually. She'd lost her last job over an overly-honest comment, which she hadn't felt was a fair reason to be reprimanded. She didn't have any reference from them, although she had managed to get one from the grocery store she'd worked at for a while before that. She was just a bit worried about the gap, and what they'd say if they found out about her being fired.
Taking a sip of water, Dani pushed the forms aside and picked up her book. Pride and Prejudice - the only book that she had with her, and a story that she'd read plenty of times before. She still liked it, though, partly because of the fact that Lizzie didn't act quite the way she was supposed to. It was nice to have someone that she related to, even though Lizzie was smart and did it on purpose whereas Dani was just... Inept.
Opening the book, Dani tucked her legs under her and leaned back into the chair, immersing herself in the familiar tale.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
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Post by adrien on Sept 6, 2006 23:21:31 GMT -5
[Continued from 'n00bz0r!1']
Adrien stepped into the room from the hallway, Mickey shortly behind her.
"Hey, Dani?" She looked back at the kid, smiling a bit, then spoke again to Dani. "Looks like the influx continues. Do you know where Marie got off to?"
At this rate they were going to need an admissions counter. She knew that and she'd only been there a few days...
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Post by danielle on Sept 7, 2006 2:38:10 GMT -5
Blinking for a few moments, Dani shrugged up at the pair of them.
"Hey Mickey. I thought you'd come in ages ago." She put her book down, standing up.
"I haven't seen Marie, but I know she's around here somewhere. I'm sure she'll be cool with Mickey being here, I mean... She took the rest of us, right?"
She shrugged again.
"I'm sure we can find her or Lee."
And then Dani did the typical teenaged thing.
"MARIE!!! LEE!!!"
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Post by mickey on Sept 7, 2006 17:58:11 GMT -5
Mickey followed Adrien into the big house. At least she'd said they needed the money, he thought. No one turned away free money, even if it had a dude attached.
Well, most of the time.
"Hey, Dani? Looks like the influx continues. Do you know where Marie got off to?"
Mickey gave Dani the Dude Wave, which consisted of two fingers held up in a sort of gunlike configuration and then a sort of horizontal flop. It looked better than it sounded.
"Hey Mickey. I thought you'd come in ages ago."
"Yeah, I was..."
Dithering.
"Um, the car."
Always a good excuse. I am man; I have car. We share special relationship.
"I haven't seen Marie, but I know she's around here somewhere. I'm sure she'll be cool with Mickey being here, I mean... She took the rest of us, right? I'm sure we can find her or Lee."
This was comforting until Dani began bellowing. Mickey flinched and grimaced. His hearing, thank you very much, was still unabused, unlike most kids' his age, by headphones. Mickey didn't like them. They did weird things to his hair and made his head look round.
"Do they have room?" Mickey asked doubtfully. Adrien, Dani, Simon, now him, and he'd picked up shufflings of other people around the house, plus of course Marie and some guy named Lee. Unless this thing was buitl to store people, space would probably be quite an issue.
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Post by Admin on Sept 7, 2006 19:17:39 GMT -5
(I love that everyone assumes Lee is a guy ^_^)
Marie had been enjoying a few moments solitude in her room with a good book. That all, of course, became the past tense as soon as Dani shouted.
"MARIE!!! LEE!!!"
Marie nearly feel off the bed as she jumped in surprise. She dropped the book, not bothering to save the page, and ran out of the room and down the hall to the room she'd designated as Dani and Adriens.
"Yes?" she said breathlessly, expecting a disaster of massive proportions. "What's wrong?"
Her hair had come undone in her haste and big chunks of it hung around her face, to which she promptly reached up and grabbed the ponytail holder and yanked it out. Her green eyes were wide, and she looked generally dishevelled. Never a good way to meet new people, but she hadn't known there were new people around to meet.
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Post by adrien on Sept 8, 2006 2:14:57 GMT -5
"Just a guest... sorry." Adrien winced, shooting Dani an amused look.
"Mickey was it?" she gestured to Marie. "Marie. Marie, Mickey."
Suddenly her cell phone went off in her jacket, hung in the closet. She jumped a little and ran to it.
"Hello?" She looked to the others. "Sorry," she whispered, and went to the doorway, ducking around Marie and Mickey. "I really have to take this." She dodged down the hall and out the back door.
[removing myself from the scene due to absence-have fun!]
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Post by danielle on Sept 8, 2006 8:00:25 GMT -5
Looking slightly bewildered at Marie's entrance, Dani shrugged.
"He... gave me and Simon a lift back this afternoon." She'd been about to say 'He's one of us,' but had remembered what Marie had told her about people's sensitivity on the subject of mutation.
Before she could say much more, a phone was ringing and Dani frowned at the closet in puzzlement. Her cell phone was on her bedside table, so it couldn't be hers. The fact that Adrien might have left hers in there didn't occur to her until the girl had left the room to answer it.
Dani wasn't used to sharing a room.
She wasn't even used to sharing a house, really, since she'd been left with only her grandfather for so long. He'd never really made a point of finishing the lesson on 'indoor voices'. But then, he was a little hard of hearing.
Shrugging again, Dani looked from Marie to Mickey and then wondered how her bedroom had become a meeting place.
Not that she minded.
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Post by mickey on Sept 8, 2006 20:42:27 GMT -5
A disheveled-looking girl Simon's age or maybe a little older came barrelling through the door. Mickey edged carefully behind Adrien, at least by about a foot.
"Just a guest... sorry."
Oh. She must've thought the place was, like, burning down. But you'd think if she lived with people she'd be used to them bellowing at her... but maybe Dani was as new as he was.
Mickey edged back out and gave the girl a wave. "Hey," he said. Marie. Pretty name. Uncomplicated and unable to be shortened cutely.
"He... gave me and Simon a lift back this afternoon."
"That I did," Mickey said, sensing the omission. He wondered if anyone had actually mentioned their old powers in the entire time the Place had been up and running. Maybe it was just the Great Untalkedabout. Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Someone's cell phone went off, and Adrien pulled it out of the closet.
Ha ha. Closet.
Then she made apologetic gestures and voices, and Mickey's eyes widened ever so slightly. No, tall person! Don't leave me alone!
But she did. Agh. Evil.
"So yeah," Mickey said to fill the silence. "Lookin' for a place to stay. I can help out and stuff. With money, and... stuff. And, um... yeah, that's about it."
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Post by Admin on Sept 12, 2006 12:07:42 GMT -5
Marie smiled pleasantly at the young man and gave an inward sigh of relief as she smoothed over her wild hair to look presentable. It was hard to keep in mind that these kids no longer had powers, and usually the disasters at Rogue's Place were nothing compared to those at the mansion. She still wished she had her own medlab sometimes though.
"Pleasure to meet you, Mickey; we'd be happy to have you stay with us. We can discuss the details of your situation later, of course," she said, putting to rest any doubts he might have had without actually having to get into a conversation about the money part of his stay in front of Dani. "We'll get you a room and get you settled in just as soon as possible."
In her head, she was going through the roster of roommates, trying to figure out who could be shuffled where and how much longer the kids would put up with being moved about everytime someone new showed up. They might have to sell the house and find something larger soon, although she doubted that they could find the money to do so. It would be nice if a hurricane swept through and left them with a pile of insurance money and the chance to build a house to their specifications.
She'd put a medlab in it.
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Post by mickey on Sept 13, 2006 21:52:27 GMT -5
Well, at least she was uncrazying pretty quickly. Maybe things just... exploded a lot around here, or something. If you get kids together anyplace, at least in Mickey's experience, that tended to happen.
"Pleasure to meet you, Mickey; we'd be happy to have you stay with us. We can discuss the details of your situation later, of course. We'll get you a room and get you settled in just as soon as possible."
"Awesome," he said, feeling much more at ease now that he was In. It was like a clubhouse, except that instead of no girlz alowed on the door, it said no humenz alowed.
"So, uh," he said, looking around the room with marginally more interest now that he wasn't going to get kicked out of it. "What do you guys... really do down here, I guess?"
It couldn't just be a free hostel in the middle of nowhere, could it? That would be weird. Too teen horror flick.
Maybe he should get some bars for his window, to guard against crazy chainsaw murderers. Good plan.
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Post by danielle on Sept 18, 2006 21:18:08 GMT -5
Scratching her head, Dani plonked back down on her bed, curious about the same thing as Simon.
Marie hadn't answered. Maybe she was waiting for more.
"Well, not everywhere likes..." Wait, not everyone was comfortable talking about being a mutant, right.
This was going to go really badly.
Dani couldn't remember to keep her mouth shut at the best of times. In a house full of ex-mutants where she wasn't supposed to talk about being a mutant of being cured or any of that, she was bound to have issues right away.
Why did I even bother?
"Anyway, the people in town don't seem to mind, so this is probably a good place for people to get used to... You know, being..." Normal again.
Yeah, definitely not going to go well.
What did they have the house for? Dani thought it had just kinda ended up that way, but then Marie and Lee hadn't really told her much about the history of the place.
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2006 11:58:32 GMT -5
"What do you guys... really do down here, I guess?"
Marie laughed softly, "well, many of the older kids have jobs in town, and the younger ones go to school. But, yeah, mostly what Dani said - most of us are still getting used to the idea of who we are and who we were."
She looked around the old room and saw it as she remembered it - a study for her grandfather. There had been a large bookshelf along the one wall that had been disassembled when kids started showing up out of the blue to live with them. The desk had been taken to the basement for storage (and god had that been a heavy piece to move! Her muscles still complained at the thought), and two beds had been bought at the local Discount Dave's so they wouldn't have to sleep on the floor. Dave was becoming a good friend of Marie's with as often as she went in there, needing new furniture.
She brought her gaze back to Mickey and Dani. "The house was my grandparents, and I grew up here. When I returned after Xavier's Institute, it had been willed to me. I don't know how people heard of it, but kids just starting flocking to it, which is nice, because it was lonely being here all by myself." Especially after the manison. It had been so quiet the first night that she had turned on the radios in as many rooms as she could just to make up for the sound.
Once again she thought that it would be nice to have a setup more like Xavier's, with a medlab and a school and enough rooms to house all the kids.
"In any case, you can stay as long as you need to. I don't expect that everyone will want to live with me forever, but I know how nice it can be to find a place where you can get back on your feet when you need it.
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Post by mickey on Sept 20, 2006 17:52:31 GMT -5
The whole denial thing was getting real old.
"A mutant?" Mickey asked. "Is there, like, a taboo or something? I mean, I know there was up North some, but does anyone here care a lot? In the house, I mean."
Was that tactful? Survey said no. It was so hard to be tactful when you didn't have a suit and tie to remind you that you were With Company.
"Well, many of the older kids have jobs in town, and the younger ones go to school. But, yeah, mostly what Dani said - most of us are still getting used to the idea of who we are and who we were."
Mickey shrugged and grinned, his labret gleaming slightly as the light struck it at a different angle. "Sounds fine to me," he said. "Just wondered."
He should probably get a job.
Ew, job.
Dilemma.
"The house was my grandparents, and I grew up here. When I returned after Xavier's Institute, it had been willed to me. I don't know how people heard of it, but kids just starting flocking to it, which is nice, because it was lonely being here all by myself. In any case, you can stay as long as you need to. I don't expect that everyone will want to live with me forever, but I know how nice it can be to find a place where you can get back on your feet when you need it."
Too bad Mickey was already so solidly on his feet - at least for the more pressing needs in life, like money, food, shelter, et cetera - that he didn't really qualify. Hmm. Moral dilemma? No, not really. He'd pay the bills for a few months. That'd make him stop feeling guilty.
Probably.
"Cool," he said. "It's a good idea. And nice of you to do, and stuff. So, um, is there someplace I can unload and set up? I mean, I don't need it right now, it'd just be nice to get started unpacking and stuff. And then maybe tomorrow I can go surf for applications."
He'd pull Marie aside at some point and give her his credit card number. Or maybe just intercept the bills the next time they came. Good plan.
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Post by Admin on Sept 20, 2006 21:02:45 GMT -5
"It's not so taboo as, well," Marie paused a moment to decide how to proceed. "Some of the younger kids aren't as comfortable with talking about it. You know, its hard to be that age and different in any way from what everyone else considers 'cool' and 'normal'. Many of them were forced to leave their families and homes, and even after being cured they didn't feel they could go home, perhaps because of something they had done on accident when their powers arrived." She could relate whole-heartedly to *that* sentiment. "So alot of them like to just pretend none of it ever happened."
That said, she felt the subject was duly closed. In general you could usually tell the people who didn't want to talk about their pasts, and her only rule was not to push them. So they moved quickly on to other topics... like finding room for Mickey.
"Well... you'll probably want to be rooming with people your age, I'm guessing? I'll move one of the younger kids in Simon's room around and stick you in there." She'd already worked out in her head where everyone was going to go, and only had to find the other kid to let him know it was time for musical chairs again.
And tommorrow she'd steal Lee's car (which was, in all rights, Marie's car) and go down to Dave's place and buy some more beds for cheap to start the transformation of a room downstairs into another bedroom.
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Post by danielle on Sept 23, 2006 10:33:14 GMT -5
Watching with interest as Marie explained the history of the house, Dani found herself considering the possibilities of the place.
Knowing what they actually did would be a good start. Were they just a halfway house or did they want to be more? What were they going to do about those rumours of powers coming back? As far as she knew, no-one in the house was getting their powers back. She certainly wasn't getting hers.
At least, no-one had been paralysed with fear yet.
She really hoped that the rumours were just that. There was no way Dani could deal with having her powers back.
It seemed like Adrien's phone call was really important, because she still hadn't come back. Weird. Except, well, not really, cause people did get important calls.
"Well, I'm going to go read downstairs." If there was any room.
"So, um... Yeah."
Well, this was awkward. When had her room become a meeting place, anyway?
Leaving the stack of applications in a neat pile on her bedside table, so that she could return them to the stores in the morning, Dani smiled brightly at the pair and thumped out of the room.
[Exit Dani]
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